Hindi
Box Office: Mom & Guest bring solace after Tubelight fails
Two veterans, both with a huge fan following in their peak, Sridevi in Mom and Paresh Rawal in Guest Iin London, were expected to lead the charge at the box office. If one looked at the making of both the films, the production costs looks moderate. But, what matters is how much the theatrical rights have been sold for. And, in that sense, Mom riding the crest.
The best recent film of moderate budget to excel has been Hindi Medium which achieved a high figure of about Rs 65 crore at the domestic box office. In case of Mom, the price at which it is sold and the kind of reports it has generated, it may fall short of its target by lengths. The difference is that, while Hindi Medium was an entertainer, Mom is a designed to be heavy film. And, they are not usually worth Rs 200 to 1000 that their admission rates command. No need to say, the eventual sufferers are the cinema chains.
Mom had an inherent drawback in that an earlier film, Raveen Tandon starrer, Maatr, was based on the same theme. Since, the films are now made for the multiplex audience, a lot of the patrons would realize that Mom is just a female version of 1974 Hollywood trendsetter, Death Wish.
*Mom opened to very weak response on Friday despite an overambitious release strategy as it was released across more screens than the film justified. The result was that many screens showed collection in few hundreds which showed on the film’s first day collections of a bare Rs 2.4 crore (Rs 24 million). The film showed an expected rise on Saturday and Sunday. The weekend collections according to trade sources are estimates are little over Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million) while those released by the makers are over 14 crore.
*Guest Iin London proves a damp squib. Following in the formula of Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, which was no great shakes in itself, the film backfires in Toto. One must be really out of sync with the realities to think that another instalment of Paresh Rawal giving a noisy outlet to his stomach problem amounted to a comedy! It is a juvenile stuff to say the least. With the first day figures of Rs 1.2 crore.
*Ek Haseena Thi Ek Deewana Tha has had a poor run at the box office with just Rs 1.05 crore to show while the weekend collected Rs 4.2 crore.
* Tubelight, Salman Khan’s home production, sold at an exorbitant price which needed to do a business which none of his films has done before, is a total disaster. Strange that the film won’t even manage a lifetime business of what his film Sultan did in its opening weekend. The film had collected over 180 crore in its five day extended weekend.
The film has added Rs 10.6 crore in its second week taking its two week tally to Rs 114.3 crore.
*Bahubali2: The Conclusion has added about Rs 30 lakh in its 10th week.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
